OTTAWA – Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch will vow today to make it legal to carry mace or pepper spray, a move her campaign is positioning as a way to reduce the incidence of violence against women.

Mace, tear gas, pepper spray and other gases that can harm or incapacitate another person are currently listed as prohibited weapons in the Criminal Code.

Errol McGihon / Postmedia

In 2012, in Gatineau, Que., a store clerk used pepper spray to ward off an attack but was not charged for using the spray. But two 15-year-olds in Ottawa in 2013 ended up facing a combined 18 charges after discharging pepper spray on a city bus.

Leitch, should she become prime minister, would remove any ambiguity and make it legal for anyone to carry and use cans of mace for self-defence while continuing the prohibition on the use of pepper spray as a weapon in any other instance.

“My thoughts around this issue are primarily with Canadian women,” Leitch says in a statement the campaign is set to release Thursday, a copy of which was obtained by the National Post. “Clarifying the laws around the use of mace and pepper spray for self-defence will give women a greater measure of protection against would-be attackers.”